The author is a poet, counsellor, and occasional scholar-in-residence. Musings on everything from advaita ("non-dualism") to sustainable living, interspersed with poems. Thanks to Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora for the name for this blog.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A Modern Hebrew Primer

A text book to teach children Hebrew was recently published by Dvir Eitan, a publishing house which specialises in educational material. The authors have tried to make the texts relevant, and to reflect current Israeli realities, while also covering the new mathematics syllabus. For those of you who don't speak Hebrew, I have translated a few paragraphs, so you can see where current Israeli pedagogy is heading:

Here is Avraham. Avraham is a settler.See Avraham throw stones at Ibrahim.How many stones does Avraham throw at Ibrahim.One stone. Two stones. Three Stones. Four.

This is Avikam. Avikam and Avraham are friends.Today they have decided to cut down some olive trees.Whose olive trees will they cut down?Why Ibrahim's of course!

This is Yitzchok Elchanan. Yitzchok Elchanan lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.Yitzchak's family belong to a group called the charedim.This is Ayelet. Ayelet lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Her family belongs to a group called dati-leumi. In Israel different groups all get on well because evn though they have nothing in common, they are still all Jews.See Ayelet going to school in a pretty blue dress.See Yitzchok Elchanan shouting at Ayelet. See Yitzchok Elchanan spitting at Ayelet. See Yitzchok Elchanan and his brothers Pinchas and Mordechai and Dovid and Shmueli and Yisroel spitting at Ayelet.What a lot of children!By counting the spit on Ayelet, can you work out how many children there are in a Charedi family?

This is Ahmad Maloun. When Ahmad grows up he wants to be a suicide bomber, just like his dad, and four of his older brothers. When his oldest brother Shahid blew himelf up, he killed seven Israelis. When his younger brother Osman blew up, he only managed to kill three Israelis. Ahmad's dad, Abu Kasim, blew up while he was still assembling his bomb. That means that the average score for the Maloun family is 3.3 Israelis. If there are 6 million Israelis, and 4 million Palestinians, how many Palestinians need to blow themselves up in order to get rid of all of the Israelis?

This is Tom. Tom is a secular Israeli. By mistake, on the way back from a casino, Tom has knocked over an 80 year old Holocaust survivor who was trying to cross the road. Unfortunately Tom needed to get home so he did not have time to stop, but he did make a mental note to be more careful in future.

Look. Now Ibrahim has thrown a stone through the window of Avikam's mother's car and she has crashed into what used to be an olive grove. And look now Avraham and a few of his friend are burning down Ahmad's house, because Ahmad's village was easier to get to than Ibrahim's.

Here is Inbal. Inbal is a leftist. She thinks Avraham was wrong to burn down Ahmad's house. She holds up a big sign. Here is a tear gas cannister fired by a border policeman.Uh oh Inbal. I think you had better move from there.

And here is another cannister. Oh, it is a a spray can. What is Avikam spraying on the wall of Inbal's building? I think he likes her and is making a love poem for her. "Soon" he has written. Now he is writing some more words. "I will send you". Perhaps it will be chocolates? or maybe flowers? What do you think children? let's see what he's writing: "to join Rabin." I'm not sure I understand this poem children, can one of you explain it to me?

"Everyone's got to serve someone"

a "hogeh deyot" - Hebrew for someone who thinks a lot about things that are not directly related to the daily round. I worships two G?ds, that are probably one and the same - creativity and balance. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Gila Rina Ditza ve Chedva. Adoshem Hu Elokim. Veshal-om shanti shanti.